


Tea

by StellarCorpses



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Getting Together, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Matchmaking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2020-12-31 15:33:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21148028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StellarCorpses/pseuds/StellarCorpses
Summary: When Crowley sauntered away from the wreckage of his Bentley, come to save the day, a lot of feelings rushed to the surface. Unfortunately, Aziraphale experienced these feelings with Madame Tracy's brain. If Madame Tracy could coax Sergeant Shadwell out of his shell and his apartment, she can certainly get Aziraphale to admit his feelings for Crowley.Crowley had a way with kids, particularly the mischievous sort. If Adam fell on a side, it was Their Side, really. So, all things considered, it was no wonder he found himself visiting the Them now and again. Anathema paid them visits, too. The kid without an aura was a good listener, and who else in Lower Tadfield was she meant to talk to,  R. P. Tyler? Crowley and Anathema wound up in the same place at the same time, and the shift in his aura at the mention of Aziraphale, a bit like a blush, is hard to miss.





	1. Madame Tracy

**Author's Note:**

> It takes a bit to get going  
(This is probably neither canon-compliant nor coherent, but here you go)

"Aren't you going to say anything?" Madame Tracy asked incredulously, in her own voice.  
"Oh, I'm terribly sorry, my dear, I forgot to thank you for lending me your corporation. World to save, and all," Madame Tracy replied in Aziraphale's prim voice.  
"You still haven't," she pointed out, "but that's not what I meant."  
"What did you mean, then?" Aziraphale asked, ignoring the first bit in a way that Crowley would find "worth liking."  
"That handsome fellow whose just come strutting along to save the day, when are you going to tell him how you feel?" She began spluttering in a most undignified manner. Ah, that would be Aziraphale, then.  
"I don't- that is to say- we're only-" Aziraphale took a breath that he didn't strictly need but which Madame Tracy did (or so he justified it to himself. After all, Madame Tracy had nothing to be blushing so furiously about) and composed himself somewhat. "Crowley knows that he is a very dear friend to me," he said uncertainly. He had said some things he did not mean recently, but Crowley had called him on it, haden't he? And he'd come back for him, too. He couldn't bear to lose Crowley, let alone be the one to push him away.  
"But you know that he isn't," Madame Tracy countered.  
"Excuse me?"  
"You're head over heels for him," she said simply.  
"Do lower your voice! He's coming back this way!" Goodness, he sounded like a middle schooler working up the courage to ask his crush to the dance. Madame Tracy pursed her lips. She was fairly certain the flirty demon playing knight in flaming Bentley had feelings for her uninvited guest, but she supposed there was little point in setting them up just in time for the world to end, tragically romantic as that sounded. There'd be plenty of time for that later, so long as this wasn't the End of Times.  
\- - -  
The Apoca-doodle-don't came and went, and Aziraphale had quite forgotten the troubling thoughts he'd overheard in the head he'd shared with Madame Tracy. Madame Tracy, romantic that she was, still turned these thoughts over in her mind from time to time, albeit with more privacy. Matchmaking two oblivious beings in love was trickier than she'd hoped, though the Seargent was some frame of reference as obliviousness went. She decided that, having been possessed (seemed like the other's lot, but what did she know about ethereal politics? Same stock, and all that) and having, she thought, something of a hand in whatever came after, she was entitled to some closure. She couldn't remember much of anything after Aziraphale left her head, his sharp, angelic memory giving way to a dream-like recollection; she couldn't remember the plot of the day, but the vibe stuck around, illiciting an odd feeling landing somewhere between nostalgia and deja vu. Adam felt it might come off rather patronizing if Aziraphale and Crowley found they could not remember the Nah-pocalypse (he was on their side, really, and it wouldn't do to start off with bad blood between them), so Aziraphales memory, housed for a time in Madame Tracy's brain, was crystal-clear. There were few people who could recall a single detail from the Middle of Times (formerly the End of Times), and fewer still who saw it through rose-colored glasses. Madame Tracy couldn't remember much of the actual conflict; the clarity came with memories of the Seargent clinging to her for dear life or a flutter in her hijacked heart at the ridiculous sight of a demon swaggering away from a bonfire masquerading as a car. Even Seargent Shadwell, the most stubborn man alive, had softened some. He left his grungy apartment a couple times a week to eat dinner across the hall with Madame Tracy, to her fading astonishment and growing delight. Surely if a man whose lived on condensed milk and sheer force of will for the entirety of his adult life (which one Private Pulsifer believes may have begun at birth) can change, an angel can work up the courage to tell someone how he feels after six thousand years. Perhaps Aziraphale, like Shadwell, just needed a push. Considering Aziraphale had commandeered her vessel without permission, she supposed she could forgo propriety and invite herself over for tea. She'd stop by Thursday, after... well, no one was quite sure what. An appointment, of sorts. Yes, she mused, Thursday would do nicely.


	2. Anathema Device

Anathema met the Them at the door on Wednesday morning. She was rather fond of the children, if only because the neighborhood watch was not. They were good listeners, Adam in particular. Today, they had a somewhat sheepish-looking man in tow.  
"Hullo," he said. He seemed familiar. Anathema squinted inquisitively at him. "I just thought I'd check in, you know, see how things were coming along with the Anti-christ and all that. Besides, if ol' Beelz ever pulls his head out of the sand and starts at it again with the bloody- sorry, kids- starts with the progress reports again, I can say I've been sowing the seeds of rebellion in these ne'er-do-wells-" he gave the children a fond look- "or something. Maybe even say I was influencing the Anti-christ, changed my mind about the whole Armageddon business. Could get a commendation for that," the man mused.  
"You!" Anathema exclaimed. "Armageddon" had jogged her memory. She couldn't remember the day of reckoning, but she knew it had occurred right on schedule, thanks to Agnes. Which brought her to the conclusion that- "You're the man who hit me with his car!"  
"Oh. Yes. Rather, I think you hit me with your bicycle, truth be told-"  
"Adam's the Anti-christ, then?"  
"Er-"  
"Was." Adam piped up. "Didn't care for it." Well, Anathema thought, wasn't that awfully on-brand.  
"Well then, mister-"  
"Crowley,"  
"Right, Crowley. If Adam's in retirement, what are you doing here? Want to have another go at my bike without your boyfriend around to fix it, do you? Where is he, anyway?" Anathema supposed this Crowley fellow was a demon - who else would Beelzebub be sending memos to? - but his partner's "Lord, heal this bike" routine didn't seem terribly demonic. Angel, then, she decided (sharp one, she is).  
Crowley spluttered, "Boyfriend? Who, Aziraphale? I- he- we- absolutely not! Did you honestly think we were a- a couple? Do we look like a couple? We're not! I'm a demon for- for Someone's sake! You thought we could be a couple?" The Them stepped back, save Adam, who looked somewhat amused. Anathema cocked an eyebrow. As Crowley's speech grew more outraged, his aura lit up with ribbons of pigment that looked a little like solar flares. Newt's aura took on this effect from time to time.  
When need be, Anathema possessed a subtlety that Madame Teacy, bless her heart, did not. "My bad. Why are you here, then?" Crowley hesitated. "Out with it,"  
"Well. That's- that's an interesting question, that is," he said weakly, providing little in the way of a response.  
"He's an honorary member of the Them," Pepper announced importantly.  
"First class," added Wenslydale, not to be left out.  
"I- I'm good with kids, is all," Crowley said defensively, "and this bunch is my kind of demonic,"  
"They're harmless!" Anathema said, affronted.  
"Exactly."  
\- - -  
By Wednesday, Anathema had quite forgotten about her odd little encounter with the demon Crowley. She'd come to pick up Newt from work (Dick Turpin was out of commission. Again.) and was waiting outside Sergeant Shadwell's door when someone smacked into her. She turned to find an embarrassed-looking Madame Tracy with a plate of food. "Ah, sorry. I'm just dropping off some food for the Sergeant," she explained apologetically, maneuvering around Anathema to set down the plate.  
"So he does eat!"  
"Pardon?"  
"Oh, well, Newt's told me about Shadwell, and from what I'd heard he subsists on condensed milk and tobacco alone. I was a little worried,"  
"Oh, Newton's such a nice boy. Are you waiting for him?"  
"Yeah,"  
"They'll be a while yet, I think. Come on, you can wait in my apartment. I'll get some tea going,"  
\- - -  
Anathema sat primly on the edge of a plush, loud floral loveseat as Madame Tracy puttered about in the kitchen. She took in the patchwork vibes of her spiritualist/schoolgirl aesthetic, blushing pinks and deep purples vying for her attention like a fully furnished Barbie dream house that had been violently shaken and dumped out on the floor. Madame Tracy strode purposefully into the little living room, tea tray in hand. "I remember you, you know," Madame Tracy began, "from the end of the world, or, you know, the lack of it,"  
"Oh?" Were Anathema not already so uncomfortably postured, she'd have sat up straighter. As it was, her eyebrows achieved the height her spine could not.  
"Yes. Not many people remember much of that day, it seems, but it's crystal clear for me for as long as that angel possessed me,"  
"Isn't that the other lot?"  
"That's exactly what I thought! Anyway, for so long as his memory was kept in my mind, I can remember every detail. You were there, I remember that. Newton, too,"  
"I don't remember it too well," Anathema admitted, "but I got the gist, I think. My ancestor predicted the whole thing, and she's been pretty spot-on so far," Madame Tracy adopted an unreadable expression for a moment, somewhere between admiration and jealousy for Agnes and her genuine gift of prophecy. The expression soon slipped away.  
"I didn't catch most of the important stuff, I'm afraid. That Aziraphale fellow made an awful racket, fretting about in my head. Especially," she grew almost mischievous, "when that handsome red-headed fellow came rolling up in that ridiculous car of his. My old heart nearly gave out for the stress Aziraphale put it through!"  
Anathema started. "Crowley, you mean?" she asked, recalling the look of cultivated disdain on the demon's face at the mention of Aziraphale, ruined by his fervent blush and agitated aura.  
"Crowley! Yes, that's the one! You know him?"  
"He hit me with his car, once." Anathema said bluntly, "And he's head-over-heels for that angel,"  
Madame Tracy gasped theatrically. "How do you know?"  
"Well, I referred to Aziraphale as his boyfriend - they were together when they hit me with the car, he called him angel, how was I supposed to know he meant it literally? - and his aura just exploded! It's metaphysical heart-eyes," At the mention of aura-reading, Madame Tracy was clearly jealous, but that was the least important revelation to her at this moment.  
"We must get them together!" Madame Tracy exclaimed, filled with renewed purpose.  
"Well, I don't know about that," Anathema countered hesitantly.  
"Who knows how long they've been at this? We can't let the end of the world roll around again before the admit their feelings for one another!"  
"I suppose we could give it a shot,"  
"A.Z. Fell's bookshop in Soho. Thursday, 3:30. We're staging an intervention. There'll be refreshments!"


	3. Tea, or An Intervention

"We're closed!"  
The bookshop was closed often. It was open nearly as often, keeping more or less the same hours as the DMV, save the predictability, and he even threw in the occasional Tuesday, between the hours of 4 and 4:30 (am). Aziraphale had closed earlier than usual today, as an old friend had dropped by for tea. A friend he was perfectly content to stay friends with, and did not even one iota want to kiss. No sirree. Not even when he took off his sunglasses, revealing his lovely golden eyes, nor when he started singing bebop at the top of his voice to be annoying, but really wound up coming off charming, and who knew he could sing so beautifully! And he certainly did not want to kiss Crowley when he smiled so softly at him as he brought the tea out. So it absolutely was not a welcome distraction when the knocking at the door came again, louder and more insistent. He bustled over to the door. "I said, we're clo- oh!"  
"Lovely to see you again, Aziraphale!"  
"Mind if we come in?"  
"I- well- I don't see why not," he said weakly. He absolutely could see why not, but he could hardly say no. Crowley could've, but he was lounging in the back room out of earshot. Aziraphale ushered Madame Tracy and Anathema into the shop and locked the door behind them. "Crowley, dear, look who's popped by!" He called out, trying in vain to keep the irritation out of his voice. He was happy to see them, but he and Crowley had been having the most wonderful time...  
"We thought we'd stop by, see how you lot are getting on," Madame Tracy said conversationally. Anathema followed her lead,  
"After the whole Apocalypse thing, kinda figured I'd see more of you. Tracy and I caught up the other day when I was picking up Newt-"  
"That car of his finally croaked?" Crowley interrupted.  
"'Fraid not. Just out of commission for the time being. Anyway, Tracy invited me in for tea and we decided we'd stop by Thursday,"  
"Thursday rolls around and, well, here we are! Fancy seeing the two of you here. Together," she winked in a manner that one might call surreptitious, if one were Madame Tracy, and that one would otherwise say was quite obvious. Crowley rolled his re-glasses-ed eyes to distract from the tension in his shoulders. Aziraphale abruptly changed the subject.  
"Well! Now that you're here, I was just telling Crowley about the new inventory the young Anti-christ gifted the shop. There are some rather exciting graphic novels-"  
"Comics, angel!"  
"'Comics,' yes, like I say, rather exciting, if you're into that sort of thing. Crowley has certainly come around to them," The look he gave Crowley was both teasing and unbearably fond. Madame Tracy thought it was very sweet. Anathema was ready to scream.  
"Angel!" Crowley groaned, "I have a reputation!"  
"You most certainly do not, my dear," Aziraphale replied with the same teasing fondness.  
"They have pet names for each other!" Anathema whispered furiously. She may not have wanted to come in the first place, but she was here now and she was invested.  
"Isn't it darling?" Madame Tracy sighed in a stage whisper.  
"What is?" asked Aziraphale.  
"This shop!" Madame Tracy replied quickly, "I'm hardly ever in the neighborhood, but I may have to visit more often!" She was quite pleased with herself; not only had she managed to deflect suspicion (debatable), but she'd secured an invitation back (perhaps more so). It was a shop, after all; the angel could hardly deny her entry (most debatable of all). Anathema and Crowley, less polite but no less panicked than Aziraphale, wore twin expressions of horror. They had really best get this over and done with, Anathema decided, lest another painful round of small talk be required. Aziraphale smiled tightly.  
"Certainly, dear, only, I do keep rather irregular hours, and I wouldn't want you to come all this way only to find me..." he was rather grasping at straws here, he knew, but someone had to keep up pretenses, "out," he finished lamely. He neglected to mention the fact that he would most likely be found decidedly "in," probably in the back room accompanied by a demon and a vintage. Madame Tracy certainly didn't need to know all that. It would only muck things up, the way a friendship, say, might be mucked up by a Principality's inability to keep his mouth shut. No, his was a sacred routine, cultivated carefully over nearly six thousand years. Best he didn't change a thing.  
"Of course," Madame Tracy said lightly. She would not be so easily deterred, but, well, one had to keep up appearances. Crowley sighed, relieved (and rather audible). Aziraphale tutted at him without any real contempt. Always the teasing and the fondness with those two. Anathema was rapidly losing her grip. She set her teacup rather forcefully in its saucer, the clink of porcelain on porcelain deafening in the awkward silence of the shop.  
"Dear girl-?" Aziraphale tried, a little out of his depth (he rarely had tea with company that extended beyond Crowley, and frankly rather preferred it that way).  
"Enough beating about the bush." Anathema cut in. She was all for subtlety, but, no she wasn't, that wasn't her style at all. "We didn't exactly come to visit,"  
"Although it was lovely to see you again!" Madame Tracy interrupted.  
"Likewise!" Aziraphale further derailed the conversation. Crowley shot him a teasing look, laced with - you guessed it! - fondness. Anathema took that as her cue.  
"Oh, would you look at that!" She feigned discovery. They would not hear it outright, it seemed. If her two years of high school theater had taught her anything, it was that when a character cannot achieve their goal by one means, they change tactics. "Your aura, Crowley!"  
"What about it?" Aziraphale, surprisingly, took the bait. Crowley's expression was guarded, though it took on a panicked note behind his sunglasses.  
"Why, it's just lit up like a Christmas tree!"  
"Has it?" Crowley tried for disinterest, a sentiment which came out a little more strangled than he meant it to. Anathema didn't necessarily know how he felt about Aziraphale, he reasoned, but his aura didn't have sunglasses to hide the soppy looks he'd been giving Aziraphale all afternoon.  
"It almost- no, exactly- looks like lo-" Crowley let his glasses slip down his nose enough to shoot her his most demonic glare over the rims. The rest of her sentence died in her throat. "lovely sentiment, of some kind or another," she finished weakly, her earlier smugness suddenly absent from her voice.  
Three assumptions were typically made of Aziraphale on sight. One of these was true (the others were a little true; a lot depended on context). Aziraphale was intelligent. Being intelligent, Aziraphale's keen mind picked up on the complete and completely obvious 180 Anathema's sentence performed.  
"What were you going to say, dear?" he asked gently, with a touch of desperation.  
"Nothing?" Anathema had meant for it to be a statement, but, as Crowley knows too well, Aziraphale can be very persuasive. He had such a comfortable disposition it was as though one could tell him anything at all. This effect was rather offset by the agitated demon beside him, whose disposition was about his comfortable as his pants.  
"Nothing," she assured him. It was then that Madame Tracy decided Anathema and her aura-reading mustn't have all the fun.  
"Crowley, I love your jacket! Did you wear that jacket on the Apocalypse? As I recall, Aziraphale thought it was quite fetching,"  
Aziraphale made a peculiar and uncharacteristic noise, a little like an "Ngk!"  
Madame Tracy was on a roll. "Quite a handsome young man, Aziraphale certainly seems to think so," Crowley looked a little lost, prompting an explanation. "He borrowed my form, you remember, so, you know. His voice, my mouth, his thoughts, my mind. He's got a bit of a crush on you,"  
"Bit of an understatement, that," Aziraphale piped up, surprising himself nearly as much as he did Crowley.  
"We'll just excuse ourselves then, yeah?" Anathema rose, startling her companion from a soap-opera-like daze.  
"Right then!" she said brightly, "we'll leave you to it!" She did not intend for it to sound as suggestive as it did, but she didn't mind it either. Up to you, how it's read, she thought.  
The pair climbed precariously onto Madame Tracy's moped, found a miraculously crowd-free little café, marveled at the miraculous weather, and found the drive home to be miraculously free of traffic. They were not the only two to feel the effects of a wave of low-grade goodness rippling outward from a source that could be located somewhere in Soho. No one knew why, but it was just a particularly lovely day. Well, two people had a hunch, but it was none of their business, really. It didn't take an aura-reader to suspect that the mysterious force enveloping the entire London area was love.


End file.
